from the someone-deserves-to-be-fired dept

Of all the stupid things a lawyer can do, it's difficult to think of many more stupid than to send a totally and completely bogus copyright infringement claim, arguing (incorrectly) a violation of DMCA section 1201 (the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA) to Cory Doctorow. Among many other things, Cory is one of the leading voices about the problems of 1201 and has fought for years to dismantle it. And thus a case that actually challenged 1201 might be interesting, but in this case, there's no valid 1201 case at all.

As explained in an EFF blog post, Bird, one of the bigger app-based scooter rental services out there, sent a completely bullshit "Notice of Claimed Infringement" to Doctorow and the parent company of Boing Boing, Happy Mutants. Over what? Over a BoingBoing post from last month that reports on how people are offering $30 conversion kits to turn a former Bird scooter into one that you yourself can use. Specifically, the article talked about how many Bird scooters were being impounded, and could potentially be sold off at some point to people who might want to convert one on the cheap into a personal electric scooter.

The letter--sent by Bird's "Sr. Corporate Counsel", Linda Kwak (whose experience appears to be focused on employment law, not copyright law)--makes a number of ludicrous claims. Thankfully, Doctorow and BoingBoing have EFF to back them up and respond forcefully to this kind of threat, with a response written by EFF senior staff attorney Kit Walsh. Here's a snippet:

First of all, Mr. Doctorow is well within his First-Amendment-protected rights to report
on the existence of these conversion kits and their use. Mr. Doctorow’s article does not
encourage any form of illegal conduct, but even if it did, the First Amendment does not
permit liability based solely on encouraging others to break the law. Even in cases where
a person advocates violent crimes, the First Amendment only permits that advocacy to be
punished when it is intended to and likely to imminently cause the lawless act. E.g.,
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 89 S.Ct. 1827 (1969). The Boing Boing article falls far short of
meeting any legal test that would allow a court to impose liability on its author, nor have
you identified any basis for doing so. Mr. Doctorow would have had every right to
advocate for Bird scooters to be destroyed or stolen; instead he simply reported that they
could lawfully be acquired at auction and lawfully modified to function as personal
scooters.

Second, you cite the anti-trafficking provisions of 17 USC 1201, alleging that the scooter
conversion kits are circumvention devices that violate Section 1201, but that does not
appear to be true. Again, Happy Mutants would have every right to report on unlawful
conduct or even to encourage it, but here the conduct being described seems entirely
within the law.

“Conversion kits” are apparently just replacement motherboards, such as the stock
motherboard for the Xiaomi Mijia m365 scooter. Installing the “kit” involves opening the
scooter, removing the motherboard containing Bird software, and replacing it with a part
that does not contain Bird software. As you note in your letter, the kit “allows the
user to replace the Bird code so that users may ride the Bird scooters without using its
app.”

It is not an act of circumvention to unplug and discard a motherboard containing
unwanted code. Likewise, a part that is used to replace the unwanted board is not a
circumvention device -- it substitutes for the part containing proprietary code rather than
circumventing technological protection measures that restrict access to the code or
prevent infringement. Use of a conversion kit does not appear to involve any access,
reproduction, or modification of any Bird code. We are likewise puzzled by your
assertion that your copyright in the Bird app provides a basis for a Section 1201 claim
against the conversion kits, since they do not appear to interact with the app at all.
You have not claimed that the Boing Boing article itself constitutes trafficking, nor could
you. It does not offer to sell or traffic in anything but rather reports true, newsworthy
facts. Attempting to expand Section 1201 to bar such reporting would fatally exacerbate
the First Amendment flaws already inherent in the statute. (Happy Mutants would also be
fully within its rights to link to a site such as eBay where the kits can be purchased, but,
contrary to your assertion, the article does not contain such a link.)

An assertion of Section 1201 is on especially shaky ground when it seeks to suppress
activity that does not infringe copyright, such as fair uses. The Librarian of Congress,
overseeing the Copyright Office, has repeatedly exempted from Section 1201’s
circumvention ban the noninfringing repair and modification of motorized land vehicles
(such as electric scooters), because barring those repairs and modifications would be
unjustified and harmful to the public. Those repairs and modifications actually do involve
circumventing access controls in order to inspect and modify copyrighted code, unlike
the conversion kits at issue here, and they nonetheless are noninfringing, fair uses.

As Walsh further explains in the EFF blog post, this really is incredibly crazy, given all of Doctorow's work on 1201:

Bird probably did not know that the journalist who wrote the post, Cory Doctorow, has been reporting on and challenging this overly broad law and its harmful consequences, both at Boing Boing and as a Special Adviser on EFF’s Apollo 1201 project, for years. They likely also didn’t know EFF has launched litigation to invalidate the law in its entirety and, in the meantime, has successfully pushed for numerous exemptions to the law -- including one that specifically permits repair and modification of motorized land vehicles (for instance, say, an electric scooter).

As fun as it might have been (again... fun for us) to have a legal fight about the nuances of Section 1201, it's pretty clear here that there's no claim to be made. The fundamental reason Bird doesn't have a claim is that Section 1201's ban on trafficking concerns products that circumvent either access controls or use controls on a copyrighted work. To simplify a bit, it concerns a device that cracks a technological measure in order to access or make an infringing use of a copyrighted work.

To turn a Bird scooter into a regular personal scooter, you just open it up and replace the motherboard that contains Bird code with a different motherboard (you could even use the official stock motherboard for this model of scooter, the Xiaomi Mijia m365). You literally throw away the copy of the Bird code residing on the unwanted motherboard, rather than accessing or copying or modifying it. We have long had serious concerns that Section 1201 can be abused to block repair and tinkering. But while the law is overbroad, it is not so broad that it prohibits you from simply replacing a motherboard.

And, of course, all this really does is call that much more attention to Doctorow's original article, and the possibilities for effectively getting your very own electric scooter on the cheap. It is utterly bizarre that anyone at Bird thought this was a good idea. Who knows if this was just the Bird lawyer going through the motions or someone else at the company directing her to do this, but at some point, companies really need to think more carefully about sending out the usual bullshit nastygrams, as they can really come back to bite a company.

from the dmca-for-censorship dept

Apparently the producers of the movie "Where Hands Touch," which is being widely panned as terrible (NY Times calls it a "gut-wrenching misfire" and notes "by the end of the movie, my jaw felt unhinged from dropping so often."), aren't responding well to the criticism. While some of the criticism is about the "plodding" storyline, much of it is about the main plot, which is about a black woman in Nazi Germany -- who appears to support the Nazi cause -- falling in love with a Hitler Youth.

The film got little attention in its theatrical release, but became available online recently, and apparently the producers decided that people tweeting negative things about it deserve to be hit with DMCA takedowns. It seems to have started with Haaniyah Angus who live tweeted watching the film. Reading the entire thread is a treat (seriously, go read it), here are just a couple of clips from her live tweeting:

Oh God, there are so many scenes that made me physically cringe. But I think the worst is when her little white brother (whose existence is never explained) says that her father was black “head to toe.” I don’t know why, but that piece of dialogue just made me want to curl up in a ball and scream. Other than that, I think the scene where a Hitler Youth rally takes place in front of Leyna’s apartment and for some reason her first logical thought is, Oh, I’ll go hang with the li’l Nazis. As most would guess, they aren’t happy to see a black girl, and then proceed to call her a nigga. It’s just so much at once ...

At one point in her thread, Angus uses a very short clip from the film to show how the film uses the awful romcom "rush to the airport, and see each other through a crowd of moving people" trope... except in a Nazi labor camp. You can guess what happened next: the producer of the film, Charles Hanson, filed a DMCA takedown notice:

The producer is apparently the person who manually filed this claim since Twitter didn’t. This is just making me yell since If this is damage control there’s nothing you can fix. pic.twitter.com/ANCVnibO2l

Charlie Lyne saw this and wrote a good thread pointing out, why this use of the DMCA to censor negative criticism was clearly bullshit.

It sucks that the producers of Where Hands Touch would resort to DMCA takedown notices to suppress negative tweets about their film. These underhand tactics—which combat Fair Use critiques with heavy-handed anti-piracy legislation—stifle criticism and coddle cinema.

Lyne explains in detail what happened -- even using the same short clip -- to criticize the filmmakers for censoring criticism. You'll surely guess what happens next. Yup! They send a DMCA notice about his thread too:

Yesterday I wrote a Twitter thread about the use of DMCA takedown notices to stifle criticism. Wouldn't you know it, by the end of the day my thread had received one of its own. I'll be contacting a lawyer on Monday before filing a counter notice. https://t.co/AsF2dTNNgU

As Lyne points out, this is not really about the use of a very short clip (with commentary, which is clearly fair use), since the filmmakers seem to be leaving up tweets that show clips that are positive about the film:

And if anyone still thinks this is really about copyright infringement, here’s a tweet sent two days before @hanxine’s thread, which also includes a clip from Where Hands Touch. This one takes a more positive stance, to say the least. It’s still up. https://t.co/GcKkkwwiOM

She says the "video" was "literally just me and my friend laughing over the ridiculousness of one of the scenes" using her smartphone.

The producer of the film, who appears to be manually sending these DMCA notices himself, responded to Gizmodo with a bunch of utter bullshit about how he's only doing this to protect the copyright:

Charlie Hanson, the producer of the film, told Gizmodo in an email that they “do not have the power to stifle criticism of the film. Everyone has been free to comment positively and negatively whether they have seen the film or not.” He argued that the film is only released in the U.S. at the moment, and that Where Hands Touch Ltd. “has only issued DMCA notices regarding breaches of copyright in cases where unauthorised clips of the film have been copied and posted online.”

This is wrong for a variety of reasons. The fact that he admits the film is only available in the US highlights how these short clips -- all used with comment and/or criticism of the film are obviously fair use. The clip that Angus and Lyne both posted was literally 14 seconds out of a movie. That's not impacting the market. The criticism of his shit film might be impacting the market, but the clips are not. It appears that Hanson's Twitter account is the aptly named @CharlieTantrum, which seems to accurately reflect his childish tantrum to criticism of his film. His Twitter feed is ignoring this entire controversy, but is merely reposting gushing tweets about the film instead.

Every so often some "copyright scholar" or "think tanker" will insist that copyright can't be used for censorship and insist that it's actually the engine for free speech. Those people are lying to you. And this is yet another example. Copyright is regularly used for censorship, though in this case, all its really served to do is make it much more widely known why no one should ever bother watching this awful movie.

from the meaningless-fodder dept

For years, the RIAA and MPAA have pointed to the millions upon millions of takedown notices sent to Google as "evidence" that the DMCA notice-and-takedown process doesn't work. You can find lots of examples of this, but here's an MPAA VP making this exact point:

“The large volume of removal requests cited in Google’s Transparency Report clearly illustrates the magnitude of the piracy problem and the ineffectiveness of the ‘notice and take down’ system,” said Chris Ortman, MPAA VP of corporate communications. “If this system were working, the numbers would be going down — not up.”

But here's the thing about that quote: it's almost entirely bullshit. First off, the numbers have started going down, but you don't suddenly hear Chris Ortman and the MPAA saying "look, the notice and takedown system is now working!" Because Ortman wasn't being honest when he made the original statement.

But, the larger point, is that takedown requests, by themselves, don't mean a damn thing about how much infringement there actually is. The requests may be bogus. Indeed, millions of the requests to Google turn out to... not even be in Google's index. Torrentfreak had a recent story pointing out that the top 3 copyright owners alone sent Google over a billion takedown requests. That article further shows just how top heavy the requests are, with the top 16 copyright owners reporting more than 50% of all the takedown requests to Google. In other words, a very small group of organizations very much have their fingers on the scales of how many takedown requests Google receives. So, for those very same organizations to whine that more takedown requests proves anything... is questionable, at best.

And back to that point about many requests not even being in Google's index. As Google's Transparency Report shows, many of those top removal requesters keep requesting links that Google doesn't even have. The 2nd largest requester, for example, is APDIF Mexico. It submitted over a quarter of a billion takedowns. But do those mean anything? Well, let's take a look at its most recent batch of requests:

So... look at that last column. A huge percentage of the URLs were not even in the index. Then look at the column to the left of that. Google removed none of the links requested. Obviously, it can't remove the non-indexed ones, but it appears that even when they were in Google's index, they were deemed non-infringing or, in some cases, duplicates to URLs that had already been received in earlier takedowns. In other words, counting up the number of requests is meaningless when organizations can and do submit URLs that aren't even in Google and when they simply repeat URLs that had already been requested. Anyone could simply re-request the same URL a billion times and it wouldn't say a damn thing about whether the notice-and-takedown system is working.

Or, if you think it's unfair to pick on APDIF Mexico -- an organization many of you have never heard of -- why not look at the RIAA? Of all of the latest requests from the RIAA, I noticed that, once again, it shows no removals by Google. Why? Because the RIAA is submitting duplicates of URLs already removed. This is literally the result of their latest request from earlier today according to Google:

If you can't see that, it shows that 99% of the URLs submitted are duplicates, and the other 1% is still "pending" meaning they might also be duplicates. When the RIAA is submitting links that have already been removed, it kinda makes you wonder if the RIAA and groups like it are simply padding their own numbers to later try to make a bullshit point about how many "takedown requests" Google receives. It certainly highlights the fact that the RIAA does not actually check to see if what they're submitting to Google is actually in Google.

Anyway, the next time you hear the likes of the RIAA or MPAA claiming that the DMCA notice-and-takedown safe harbors aren't working because of the number of takedowns, you can safely note that they are being dishonest.

from the one-piece-of-the-puzzle dept

We've written a few times about a key DMCA case in Texas, involving the ISP Grande Communications and Universal Music Group (and, by proxy, the copyright trolling operation Rightscorp). The case has had a lot of up and downs, with the judge tossing UMG's "vicarious infringement" claims, while letting the "contributory infringement" claims move forward. In October, the court rejected UMG's attempt to bring back the vicarious infringement claims which had already been dismissed, with some fairly harsh words directed at UMG for attempting that.

The latest, as first noted by Torrentfreak, is that the magistrate judge has recommended rejecting Grande's use of the DMCA safe harbor defense. I still have general issues with the idea that the "repeat infringer" part of the DMCA is being accurately described in these cases (specifically: the courts are now applying it to accusations of infringement, rather than actual infringers, which requires a court adjudication). However, the magistrate basically points out that Grande can't make use of the safe harbors because... it had no repeat infringer policy at all. Or, rather, it did, but in 2010 it stopped using it, and then never had a policy through 2016.

So, without a policy, they couldn't have reasonably implemented it... and thus, no safe harbors. Given the facts of the case, that's perhaps not that surprising. The DMCA requires you to have a reasonably implemented policy (Cox lost its similar lawsuit not because it didn't have a policy, but because it didn't follow its own policy).

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that UMG is going to win the case. Not having the safe harbor makes it harder for Grande, but not fatal. UMG will still need to prove contributory infringement, which is going to be fairly difficult to show. Earlier in the case, the court had noted "that this is not yet a well-defined area of law, and that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue." Effectively, UMG will need to show that Grande "induced" infringement by its actions, and Grande will claim it did no such thing. But it can't just use the DMCA safe harbors to get the case dismissed, rather it will need to focus specifically on the question of whether it induced people to infringe.

from the can't-wait-for-Copyright-Shitposter-2 dept

If you can't stand the heat, whip out the DMCA notices, I guess. Earlier this week, in response to criticism, a game developer hit a YouTuber with dozens of bogus DMCA claims. "Eroktic," who has posted several videos of him playing Battlestate Games' multiplayer shooter "Escape from Tarkov," was on the receiving end of nearly 50 claims.

Rather than pretend this is about copyright by claiming it didn't give Eroktic permission to use footage of its game, the Russian developer has been surprisingly open about its abuse of the DMCA system. Comments given to Polygon's Charlie Hall show Battlestate is well aware it's misusing YouTube's copyright claim process, but says that's the only way it can protect its good name.

“We know what this instrument is designed for,” said a representative, referring to the DMCA claim system. “We had to use this tool in order to stop the wave of misinformation. What’s important to be noted is that we didn’t ban this person in-game. We still allow him to play and to stream [on Twitch] because he never cheated, he never broke the rules of the game, and he never broke the rules of the license agreement on the game. But in his videos he spread a lie, and we had to act fast and stop this.”

The "lies" referred to here are statements made by Eroktic referring to an alleged data leak that exposed user info and passwords. Battlestate claims this never happened, but rather than just address this with a denial, it decided to carpet bomb Eroktic's YouTube account with bogus DMCA claims. Even if someone could construe this to be a justifiable way to deal with alleged misinformation, that doesn't explain why Battlestate filed claims on 44 Eroktic videos containing zero discussion of the data leak.

And it's about far more than a discussion of a supposed data leak. Further comments made by Battlestate say it didn't like the "tone" of Eroktic's videos and promised it would issue more bogus copyright claims if videos containing its game contained "negative hype." Transparency like this is stunningly refreshing, even though that's swiftly overwhelmed by the rank odor of horseshit.

Hopefully, YouTube will penalize Battlestate for abusing the claim process. Battlestate's own statements make it clear the claims it issued weren't valid. That should be enough to remove any strikes handed out by YouTube and return Eroktic to good standing. But that all assumes someone at YouTube is paying attention to what's happening. Given that challenges are at the mercy of a mostly-automated system with zero human operators standing by to take YouTubers' calls, a restoration/smackdown is far from guaranteed.

So, it's another "anomaly" we can file with the hundreds of similar anomalies this site has covered over the years. Give someone an automated tool to target and remove content and it will be abused. The only thing anomalous about this abuse is the perpetrator stating up front that it knows it's abusing the system. This should warn plenty of people away from the developer and its offerings. No one wants to give money to a company that has abused a legal process to shut down criticism.

One of the most recent scams we’ve seen targets various popular game piracy sites, including gamestorrents.tv, fitgirl-repacks.site, freegogpcgames.com, crotorrents.com, nosteam.ro, pcgames-download.com and skidrowreloaded.com.

The notices in question are seemingly sent by prominent names in the gaming industry, such as Steam and Ubisoft. However, the sudden flurry of takedown requests appears to be initiated by scammers instead.

These scammers appear to be going after competitors. The entities behind this wave of bogus takedown notices are gaming Google's search engine via DMCA notices. Much like shady characters trying to vanish unflattering news and blog posts from Google's search results, these shady characters are trying to move their malicious sites higher in the rankings by targeting similar sites offering a similar selection of cracked software.

But rather than go with a straight copyright claim which could be contested and result in a reinstatement, the scammers are using another part of the DMCA -- one that provides no adversarial process.

[T]he notices are not regular DMCA takedowns. Instead, they are notifications that the URLs circumvent technological protection measures such as DRM, which is separately covered in the DMCA.

“Google has been notified that the following URLs distribute copyright circumvention devices in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201,” Google informed the site owner.

“Please find attached the notice we received. There is no formal counter notification process available under US law for circumvention, so we have not reinstated these URLs. If you dispute that you are distributing circumvention devices, please reply with a further explanation.”

That's the way the law works. Takedown notices claiming DRM circumvention (most pirated software involves some sort of circumvention) cannot be contested. Google is allowing replies in these cases, but what it's doing isn't mandated by law. Google, however, is obliged to comply with requests unless it feels the complaint isn't legitimate. How strongly it feels sometimes depends on the manpower available... or the attention the issue is receiving elsewhere on the web.

The notices collected by TorrentFreak hardly seem legit, even with only a cursory review. They're littered with typos and make unrealistic/absurd claims, like supposedly filing on behalf of Steam even though Steam doesn't actually own or produce the game titles listed in the takedown notice.

As TorrentFreak notes, thousands of URLs have already been taken down, pushing malware-loaded sites higher in search listings. Internet users seeking free games now may find they've picked up bitcoin-mining hitchhikers after visiting these scammers' sites.

The good news is Google is paying more attention to these takedown requests and has reinstated some URLs targeted by these malware purveyors. But the fact that this sort of search engine gaming is still effective is further proof the DMCA enables abuse by treating the accuser as inherently credible while limiting the options of those falsely accused.

from the smash-the-leaks dept

A cursory review of our posts on Nintendo will reveal a company all too willing to wield intellectual property purely as a way to combat anything it doesn't like. The gaming giant jealously protects its IP, sure, but it also deploys its lawyers for such purposes as scaring the shit out of ROM sites, silencing YouTubers, shutting down fan-games from its biggest fans, and holding its consoles hostage unless customers agree to updated EULAs. Outside of Nintendo, many groups have tried to use copyright laws and the DMCA to combat leaks about content, or the content itself. This is rarely a good idea, what with the opportunity to use such leaks as free promotional material being an option instead.

Well, as you may have heard, Nintendo suffered its own high-profile leak recently, with the forthcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate finding its way onto the internet before the game has even been released. As you would expect, Nintendo got its lawyers busy firing off DMCA notices for all kinds of sites that were hosting the actual game that leaked. It also, however, decided to issue copyright strikes on YouTubers who showed any of the games content.

The YouTuber named Crunchii has been uploading new remixes from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to his channel over the past few days, which has drawn the ire of Nintendo. Crunchii's channel has been hit with copyright strikes from Nintendo of America, which has caused him to be locked out of his account and will result in its termination over the next few weeks.

There is also a YouTuber named Dystifyzer, who also posted songs from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's soundtrack. He too has been hit with numerous copyright strikes from Nintendo and is expecting his YouTube channel to be gone by next week.

This is stupid on so, so many levels. First, combating leaks with copyright notices rarely works at all, never mind well. Once the bell has been rung on the internet, it's nearly impossible to fully unring it. On top of that, going after YouTubers that are simply showing off the leaked product really only makes a ton of sense if you don't have a ton of confidence in the quality of that product. If you believe the product is awesome, you should want it shown off, even prior to release. Hell, maybe especially just prior to release, as a way to hype the game even further and push more sales.

It's worth noting both that pretty much everyone showing off this leaked content was expecting Nintendo to freak out over it, and that the leaked content itself isn't terribly compelling.

The sad thing is that the leaked content from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate hasn't been all that exciting – it's mostly new music tracks and some new facets of the World of Light mode. There haven't been any secret unannounced characters hiding in the code of the game that Sakurai was hoping to spring on the fans.

The reason why the World of Light mode doesn't have as many cutscenes as the Subspace Emissary mode is due to how disappointed Sakurai was when all of the lovingly crafted FMV sequences were quickly uploaded to the Internet. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate leak proves that he was right to reveal everything beforehand, as any secrets would have been spoiled just two weeks before the game was released.

Making it all the more head-scratching that Nintendo is going to these lengths to combat the showing of the leaked content. But, hey, Nintendo is gonna Nintendo, I suppose.

from the dmca-terrorism dept

Much has been written at this point about the problems with various "notice and takedown" policies, including in the DMCA. Much of the problems arise from the DMCA's requirement that service providers "expeditiously" remove infringing material upon notice, which naturally leads to platforms erring on the side of removal versus taking a hard -- and manual -- look at the material in question to see if it's really infringing. This results in all kinds of takedowns of speech that is not infringing, typically as a result of human error, a dispute over the actual ownership of rights, a lack of recognizing fair use, or, perhaps most often, an automated system for sending DMCAs simply screwing up.

Multiple bass music artists have alleged that their tracks have been removed from SoundCloud for wrongful copyright claims. Working under an account by the name "Dr Egg," an unknown user reportedly made copyright violation claims against multiple artists, which these artists are claiming resulting in the removals. In the SoundCloud platform, uploads can be taken down for copyright violations if SoundCloud receives an email making a claim against the track. A copyright violation occurs when someone uses a sample or part of a song that was already copyrighted by another artist or company. Currently, it only takes one claim to have a track removed and it may be reinstated if the claim is proven false.

According to reply emails from SoundCloud to the artists in question, "Dr Egg" used email addresses that pointed to Moonboy (moonboycreator@outlook.com) and Too Vain(toovain@outlook.com) to make these strikes. The user appears to have falsified Moonboy's (Jaime Madsen) signature and used his name on the copyright infringement claims. Moonboy made a video on Twitter to speak out against the fraud.

That the policy can be weaponized for nihilistic mayhem in this way at all is a clear signal that changes need to be made. That this doesn't happen constantly is not a defense of the policy. Good internet policy is not that which can be easily subverted by impersonating another person, because that happens all the time on the internet. And, when coupled with platforms being incentivized only in the direction of quick takedown of art and speech, that causes a massive speech issue that would make the founding fathers go into a rage.

In this case, SoundCloud did manage to get the uploads in question restored.

A spokesperson on behalf of SoundCloud has responded to EDM.com with the following statement:

"Our takedown notification process is designed to respect copyright, and it is our policy to review all infringement claims per the guidelines outlined in our Help Center. Upon review, we have determined these copyright claims are not valid, and are happy to report we’ve reinstated all affected content."

Which is all well and good, but we still have a problem. And I'm pretty sure the impetus for that problem can be found in the very first line of SoundCloud's statement: "Our takedown notification process is designed to respect copyright...". You may notice that there is no mention of speech and art in the statement at all. This is, again, because all of the incentives in the DMCA's notice and takedown provisions push platforms to favor copyright over art -- which is anathema to the principles of free speech.

from the victory dept

Earlier this year, we wrote a bunch of posts on the Copyright Office's request for comment on changes needed to the DMCA's anti-circumvention exemption list. There were lots of interesting submissions, but one that caught my attention was a whole bunch of film association groups, most of them for documentarians, advocating that the anti-circumvention they enjoyed to be able to use clips from other films and content be expanded to include filmmakers generally. This would address the copyright industries' cynical attempt to route around Fair Use usage by filmmakers by simply locking up their content behind all kinds of DRM that, unless you're a documentarian, you can't circumvent. The MPAA, as you would expect, said that allowing for this would kick off "widespread hacking" of all the DVDs on the planet, while all it was really concerned about was the licensing agreements it was able to secure by filmmakers who didn't want to violate the DMCA to get the Fair Use clips they wanted.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemptions aren’t just for documentary filmmakers any more. The U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress last week broadened a DMCA exception to now allow more filmmakers to circumvent anti-copying technology and rip short video clips for purposes of commentary and criticism.

“This is huge for the independent film industry,” said Michael Donaldson, an attorney who argued for expanding the exemption before the Copyright Office, in a written statement. “The use of fair use material by narrative filmmakers has exponentially increased to the point where expanding the exemption to fiction films was absolutely necessary.”

What this means is that more filmmakers will now be able to simply rip clips from protected DVDs to use in their own creative works, as long as the purpose of the clip is used for parody or to demonstrate biographical or historically significant information. This opens up all kinds of uses, of course, but all of them will still be subject to being truly Fair Use cases. That, of course, is a defense, so you can expect lawsuits to be filed before we settle into some kind of a norm here.

Still, this is a good decision by the Copyright Office. The idea that the MPAA and others could lock up content that could otherwise be fairly used behind DRM obviously doesn't comport with the purpose of the law.

from the epic-fail dept

We've had plenty of stories revolving around content owners and publishers issuing DMCAs over trailers and advertisements. These stories are always head-scratching in one way or another, typically centering around the question of why anyone would ever want to take down free advertising, even imperfect free advertising. We've also seen plenty of examples of content owners accidentally sending DMCA notices over their own content, all of which help to highlight both the flaws in the DMCA process and just how difficult it is for even content owners themselves to know just what is infringing and what isn't.

A Fortnite season 6 trailer was briefly taken down earlier this week, after receiving a strike from YouTube for copyright infringement. That alone would be strange enough, since trailers and promotional videos typically secure the rights to any third-party media ahead of time. But the real kicker here is who issued the claim: according to a screengrab posted to Reddit, it was none other than Fortnite's own developer, Epic Games.

The internet then spent the next day or so poking fun at Epic in the form of memes and in-game references, but this really isn't much of a laughing matter. And, whatever actually happened here, it serves to show the flaws in the DMCA process relating to YouTube videos. The most likely explanation is that Epic has an automated system to flag and DMCA videos that contain game content from Fortnite. The problem here is that this was a trailer for an upcoming release, meaning that it would be odd for the algorithm to already be set to pick up on that content. Perhaps it's simply recognizing the general game or characters and flagging it, but we don't know for sure. And, given the vast amounts of let's plays and other content on YouTube featuring Fortnite, it's hard to square just why this trailer would have been flagged when other videos are not. Regardless, the end result of this would be Epic Games DMCAing its own advertisement, the very last thing it would want to do. If that doesn't show the flaw in how the DMCA process is handled on all sides right now, it's hard to imagine what would.

Of course, the other possible explanation here is that it wasn't Epic that DMCA'd the trailer at all, but rather someone impersonating the company.

This system has been criticized for having little oversight and placing undue burden on those impacted by the strikes. Someone looking to cause trouble could, for example, pretend to be a company and issue a fraudulent claim. Or, as has happened in the past, a creator of a game or film could use YouTube's system to punish negative reviews.

Yes, and with little oversight and next to nothing in terms of punishment for sending false DMCA notices in this way, there is little that would stop this from happening. While the first possible explanation registers as a flaw we can all laugh at, the latter shows the true danger in the DMCA process as a method for censoring speech. And that's something nobody appears to be paying attention to, even as the flaw is exposed for all to see.

The DMCA isn't perfect. What it really lacks is legislated teeth to punish abuse and fraud. Until that happens, abuse will run rampant, as will automated systems that DMCA perfectly legitimate content, such as a company's own advertising.